History Behind the Scenes: Exploring Delaware's Libraries, Museums, and Historic Sites (HIST/MSST 385)
Three-credit course offered at the University of Delaware, summer, 2018.
On its surface, “History Behind the Scenes: Exploring Delaware’s Libraries, Museums, and Historic Sites” engages student interest with exciting, behind-the-scenes access to the area’s cultural heritage institutions. Yet the course was conceived primarily as a way to use inquiry-based learning to teach students the basics of examining primary sources and thinking critically about collective memory. Designed to attract enrollment from non-majors, the class explores issues in nonprofit administration, visits 10 libraries and museums, and completes an advocacy assignment in which students contact elected officials about the importance of heritage preservation to civic life. The course fulfills an undergraduate "Discovery Learning Experience" requirement at the University of Delaware.
Sample Course Materials:
Syllabus
Museum How-To's
Site Visit Evaluation Form
The Curator's Toolkit: Up Close and Personal with the Rosenbach's Collections
Exhibition object label discussion session in the Elkins Room at the Free Library of Philadelphia Rare Book Department, part of "The Curator's Toolkit" course, October 25, 2022.
Offered at the Rosenbach during fall 2021 and fall 2022.
Do you love discovering fascinating stories from history? Have you ever wanted to get up close and personal with museum and library collection objects, including rare books, manuscripts, paintings, furniture, precious metals, and ceramics? If so, then this course is for you.
The Curator’s Toolkit will equip you with knowledge and skills for handling, studying, preserving, and learning from fine art, antiques, rare books, and manuscripts at The Rosenbach and beyond, and give you hands-on, behind-the-scenes access to world-renowned museum and library collections. You will even write an object label for a real Rosenbach museum exhibition. In this course, the historic Rosenbach house becomes your laboratory for the study and enjoyment of art, artifacts, and historic texts.
Sample course materials:
Syllabus (fall 2021)
Syllabus (fall 2022)
Artifact Lab - Crash Course in Artifact Study (fall 2021)
Artifact Lab - Archives and Collective Memory (fall 2021)
Artifact Lab - Prints and Paintings (fall 2021)
Artifact Lab - Manuscript Study at the Free Library of Philadelphia Rare Book Department (fall 2022)
Object Label Writing Assignment (fall 2021)
Defining Key Terms: Rare Books, Archives, and Special Collections (fall 2021)
Stephen Girard: Finding a Forgotten Founding Father
Cover of The Will of the Late Stephen Girard, Esq. with a Short Biography of His Life (Philadelphia: Thomas Deliver, 1849). Bound in Henry Simpson, The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians, Now Deceased… (Philadelphia: William Brotherhead, 1859). Call no. A 859liv v.5. Courtesy of the Rosenbach Museum & Library. Photo by Rasheena Wilson.
Two-session seminar course taught at the Rosenbach Museum & Library and Girard College in November 2024.
Join the Rosenbach for an epic voyage into Philadelphia’s Revolutionary and early national history!
Stephen Girard, a French émigré who took up residence in Revolutionary Philadelphia and became the wealthiest man in the early United States, is mostly remembered today as the philanthropic founder of Girard College—and for Civil Rights litigation surrounding the school in the 1960s. Hailed as a leading civic hero shortly after his death, today Girard has receded into the background of Philadelphia’s collective memory. In this two-session course, travel behind the scenes into the collections of Girard College and the Rosenbach to study rare books, manuscripts, and artworks, and become acquainted with this complex, forgotten Founding Father.
Sample course materials:
Course Syllabus
